I spent the rest of the day on the road and in stores, driving as far as a popular shopping mall in Delaware, but it was impossible to drive away from my thoughts. It occurred to me that Joseph had been no more forthcoming than Adrian regarding the investigation of my mother. He must have known about it, yet he had gone along with Adrian's story about my father's artistic temper tantrum, indicating that was the reason we had left Wisteria. About 7:30, angry at everyone, I returned to Mason's Choice.
"I warned Mr. Westbrook you would bring trouble," Mrs. Hopewell greeted me as I came in the kitchen door.
"It's lovely to see you, too, Mrs. Hopewell."
I knew it from the moment you telephoned."
"And you made it quite clear," I said, continuing toward the hall. I guessed that something had happened while I was gone, but I would not take her bait and ask what was wrong. I walked quickly, anxious to find Patrick.
"Kate," Robyn called.
I stopped reluctantly at the dining room door. The supper candles were still burning, and several chairs had been pushed back from the table at odd angles. She and Trent sat nursing their coffee.
"Yes, ma'am?"
"Come in," she said.
I took one step inside the door.
"When I give you an instruction to come in, young lady-" "Let it go, Robyn," Trent interrupted. "Kate, have you been talking to Patrick about your time here as a child?"
"No, sir, I haven't said a word about it."
"Don't lie," Robyn hissed between her teeth.
"I don't," I replied.
"After you left today," Trent went on, "Patrick climbed a tree growing close to a cottage, the one where your family lived."
"Children climb trees, they have for centuries," I pointed out. "And, unless someone else told him, he has no idea where I used to live. He doesn't know my family stayed at Mason's Choice."
"He was trying to climb in the bedroom window," Trent pressed on, his eyes sharply observing me. Ashley had climbed that tree the day she threw my doll through the window-he remembered that as well as I.
"Were the windows and doors on the first floor locked?" I asked.
"Shuttered and locked," said Robyn.
"So then, it makes sense that he tried to get in through the second floor."
Trent took a sip of coffee. "When questioned, he told us he was playing with Ashley." Trent's voice was steady, but I heard the china cup clatter in its saucer. "Ashley and the orange cat."
"He has been talking a lot about Ashley," I admitted.
"Since you arrived," Robyn said quickly. "Emily told us that this talk started when you arrived."
"Did it?" I replied. "Then I can't help but wonder why someone would choose that moment to start telling ghost stories, for that is what I'm hearing from Patrick. Does someone want to frighten him, or is this directed at me? Perhaps it's an effort to get rid of me by upsetting others. What do you think?"
Trent and Robyn exchanged glances.
"Who found Patrick doing this?" I asked.
"Roger, the groundskeeper," Robyn replied.
"I thought he was off today."
"He lives in the cottage next door. He heard Patrick cry out when he fell."
"Fell! Why didn't you tell me? Is Patrick all right? Where is he?"
"This discussion isn't over," Trent said as I turned to exit.
"Then you will have to finish it yourselves," I replied, and rushed toward the steps.
I found Patrick in bed, wearing his sailboat pajamas, making action figures climb over the little mountains that were his knees under the quilt.
"Kate, you're back!" he said, his face lighting up. His right cheek was bruised, and there was a slight cut over his eye.
"Hel-lo, you're looking colorful! What happened to you?"
Patrick immediately pulled up his pajama sleeve to show me a bruised arm.
"Impressive. How did you do that?" I asked.
I fell out of a tree."
"That doesn't sound like a fun thing to do."
He cackled. "I didn't try to, Kate."
"Glad to hear it. So why were you climbing the tree?"
"Ashley dared me."
The breath caught in my throat-dared him, the way she had dared me. But daring is something children like to do, I reminded myself, and it provided a good excuse.
"We were playing with November," he said, "and he climbed the tree."
"November?"
"The orange cat. That's his secret name."
My skin tingled. Ashley would never tell me the cat's name-she had enjoyed tormenting me with it, as she had tormented Brook with the names of her horses. November was an unusual name for Patrick to have chosen on his own-but not for Ashley, I thought suddenly. The cat had first appeared at Thanksgiving, which would have been November.
"From now on, Patrick, when someone dares you to do something-l don't care who it is-say no."
"I told her I didn't want to go any higher, but she kept daring me."
"Ashley can't tell you what to do," I said, sounding eerily like my mother.
His legs moved restlessly under the quilt. "Kate, are you sure she's like Casper?"
"You mean a friendly sort of ghost?"
He nodded.
I sat on the edge of his bed. "Perhaps she is like children you've met before, sometimes a good friend and sometimes not. But I'm certain of one thing: Ashley can't tell you what to do. If she tries, you come tell me."
"So," said Emily, entering the room, "you do talk to him about Ashley."
I didn't start it," I said.
"You know, Kate, I defended you in front of the others.
"We talk about Ashley when Patrick wants to," I explained, "when he feels uncomfortable about things."
She looked more tired than angry, her usual pink lipstick worn off, her fair skin showing gray under her eyes.
"Patrick, this kind of talk has to stop," she said. "It makes Trent and Robyn very unhappy. Daddy doesn't like it either. And Mrs. Hopewell is angered by everything you do. There can be no more mention of Ashley."
Patrick pressed his lips together, locking his thoughts inside.
Emily asked if I would help her put Patrick to bed. Ten minutes later, when we emerged into the main hall, with Patrick's door closed behind us, I turned to her. "What does Adrian think about this Ashley talk?" I asked quietly.
"He says that it is nothing, that it's just a stage Patrick is going through"-Emily glanced toward their bedroom door-"but I know that it, along with some other things happening in this house, is upsetting him. This evening he looked as bad as the last time he went into the hospital." Her whisper grew ragged with anger. "His children are heartless. Heartless! You would think, after all he has given them, they'd try to make his last year a happy one. But all they can think of is themselves and what they would acquire if Adrian hadn't married me. If it were up to me, they'd find themselves out on Scarborough Road without a cent."
Eyes burning with tears, she turned her face away from me, then slipped into a hall bathroom, the small one Patrick used. She probably wanted to cry without Adrian seeing her. Knowing better than to offer sympathy to an employer who was sensitive about authority and position, I took the main stairs up to my room.
I felt badly for Emily and worse for Adrian, but his serious illness made it all the more necessary that I talk to him as soon as possible. Someone was preying on Patrick's mind, and if he was the designated heir, the greedy, vicious members of this household had plenty of motivation to go after him. It occurred to me that Ashley had also been Adrian's favorite. What if Sam was right and she was murdered?
Impossible, I thought. And yet Adrian thought it possible enough to investigate my mother. Why? Things were being hidden from me. What didn't I know about Patrick's situation? What didn't I know about my own?
Chapter 9
The phone call came early Monday morning while Patrick and I were eating breakfast. Mrs. Hopewell looked incredibly annoyed. "These are your working
hours," she said to me. "Socializing is to be done on your own time."
I took the phone from her hands without asking who it was. I would have chatted with someone selling real estate at the North Pole. "Hello?"
"Kate? Sam. I know this is a bad time, but it seemed too long to wait all day. I'll make it quick. I'm sorry about your dad. I'm sorry about his cancer and death and all."
That certainly was quick-a sudden jab to the heart.
"My mother said she saw the obituary a couple months ago," he continued. "It must have been hard for you. I'm really sorry."
I had received many condolences and had responded graciously to people ranging from Princess Ann to the postman, but all I could do now was stare at my toast.
"Are you there?"
"Yes."
"I'm sorry about your mother, too," he said. "I didn't know anything about that. I can't really understand what it's like to be in your shoes, but it's got to be tough."
After several months, what I couldn't understand was why I was suddenly close to tears. Sam was no poet, but it was as if I heard his words deeper inside me, as if they reached some part of me that other people's words did not.
Patrick tugged on my sleeve. "Who is it?" he asked. Sam.
"Sam! Can I talk to him?"
"Thanks for calling," I said. "Patrick wants to talk to you." I handed over the phone with relief.
"Hi. We're eating breakfast," Patrick told him cheerfully. "Toast with grape jelly…. Yeah… yeah." As Sam spoke to him, Patrick began to study my face.
"Well, she's just sitting there No, she hasn't eaten anything yet.
I stuffed a piece of toast in my mouth.
"Now she has-why is that funny?" Patrick asked. "I think she's okay. Okay, I will." He hung up. "Sam said I should be good today and try to make you smile."
"That's nice," I said, and swallowed in lumps the rest of my breakfast.
Immediately after I dropped Patrick at school, I drove to Olivia's Antiques, hoping to find Joseph in early. I could have called him on the cell phone Adrian had given me, but I wanted to see Joseph's face when I questioned him. His reaction would guide me in how to proceed with Adrian.
"Just the person I was hoping to see," Joseph greeted me, when I opened the shop door, making the bells jingle.
"Aren't you supposed to say, 'Shop's closed'?"
He smiled. "I'm on my way to Crossroads, to see what prices some of these unforgivably ugly objects are fetching at auction. Would you like to come along? Someone told me they have a painting that looks like one of your father's-a retriever with a goose. It seems strange that he would leave such a number of paintings unsigned."
"He signed only those he was satisfied with," I explained, "and he had very high standards. I'd like to have a look."
"My S.U.V. is around back."
Joseph drove to Crossroads and I bided my time, wanting a clear view of his face when I told him what I had discovered. He was in a good mood, chatting about his public relations job at the conservatory in Baltimore, fussing about the prima donna attitudes of the visiting musicians.
Crossroads was outside of town, but on the other side of Wisteria from Mason's Choice, north of Oyster Creek. The large building sat at an intersection of Eastern Shore routes, roads that provided easy connections west to Baltimore and Washington, and north to Wilmington, Philadelphia, and New York.
Joseph said that it was one of the three major auctions serving Mid-Atlantic dealers, each one running just one day a week. But it had also kept its old role, having an outdoor auction where local people and flea-market enthusiasts bid on "the ugly and the useless."
We parked in an open field, and I soon saw what he meant. Spread on a sandy lot next to the auction house were rows of items that should have been taken to the dump-worn Christmas decorations, old propane tanks, paintings of rock stars on velvet, rusted appliances covered with flowered Con-Tact paper, and furniture that one couldn't imagine buying when new. A motorized cart, manned by an auctioneer, rolled up and down the rows, trailed by bidders.
Joseph and I followed at a distance. "Maybe Mother left me more than I realized," Joseph said. "I'll bring her things here, though I'm going to have to wear a disguise. I wouldn't want anyone to think they're mine."
We moved slowly in the direction of the auction house, then turned at the head of the next row. I stopped to look at a batch of sports memorabilia, which included a hockey stick.
"You're really into the sport," Joseph remarked.
"No, Patrick is," I replied, "and he needs someone to be into whatever he's into. Joseph, do you remember the guy who came to Olivia's to buy a bracelet last week?"
"The eloquent one who left his fingerprints all over the glass counter?"
"That's right. He plays hockey for the high school. His name is Sam Koscinski."
I watched for a reaction. Joseph's beard and mustache hid most of his mouth, and the skin around his eyes stayed as smooth as before.
"Do you know the family?" I asked.
"I knew of a man who might have been his father, Mike Koscinski."
"A private investigator," I prompted.
Joseph nodded slowly.
I lost patience. "Why didn't you tell me my mother was a murder suspect?"
Joseph pulled a pen from his pocket and stuck it in his mouth. "Because I was afraid you'd ask the next question."
"I'm asking it. Why did Adrian suspect her?"
Joseph chewed on the pen, then drew it out of his mouth like a cigarette and started walking.
"Adrian suspected a lot of people, Katie. He was desperate for someone to blame. People get that way when there has been a terrible accident." We stopped at the edge of the auction lot, next to a large placard pointing to the building entrance. "He suspected me, even Mrs. Hopewell. Anyone who wasn't family was looked at askance."
"Perhaps, but it was my mother whom Mr. Koscinski was hired to investigate-Sam told me. It was my mother who was being chased by him the night we left."
Joseph clicked the pen in his hand.
"Tell me what you know," I insisted. "I'm talking to Adrian this afternoon and I'm going to ask him about it. I will get to the bottom of this, you can count on it."
He rubbed his perpetually damp brow. "Katie, let me explain something to you and perhaps you'll understand why I didn't want you to ask too many questions. There was-uh-a connection between your father and Corinne, Trent's wife."
I steeled myself. "What kind of connection?"
"You know what I mean-you're almost an adult. They were lovers. It happened before your father met your mother, when Corinne first came to Mason's Choice as Trent's bride and your father came as a very young, very handsome artist. I wasn't around then, of course, but people don't change. Trent is quite intelligent, and probably the most boring, uptight person on the face of the earth. Your father was dashing, dramatic-" I wasn't interested in excuses. "When Dad came back with my mother and me, did he keep it up?"
"Yes. And he discovered he had fathered two little girls, Katie and Ashley."
"Ashley." It was like looking into a convex mirror-I recognized all the objects shown, but everything looked different, their spatial relationships changed.
I wanted to deny what Joseph said, to deny any pain my mother might have felt because of my father's unfaithfulness, which would then require me to feel sorry for her. But I remembered how my father loved to see Ashley and me playing together, how he would do little sketches of us with our arms around each other, how he wept when he was told of the accident. And I remembered the times when Ashley and I came upon my father and her mother together. We were too innocent to figure it out-at least, I was.
"Did my mother know?"
"She found out two weeks before Ashley died."
I leaned against the sign.
"I didn't want to have to tell you that," Joseph went on. "Of course, it was just a coincidence, but you can see how Adrian, needing to blame someone, would turn on your mother."
&nb
sp; "And feel remorseful about it now-perhaps that is why he is so nice to me. Perhaps he spun that story about my father's artistic tantrum because he thought the reality would be too painful for me."
"Or for him," Joseph said bluntly. Even with the beard, I could see one side of his mouth draw up. "Adrian hates to be wrong."
"He was wrong, wasn't he?"
"Katie! How can you think otherwise?"
Easily. My parents had told me half-truths. So had Adrian and Joseph. Why should I believe any of them now? I jammed my hands into my coat pockets.
"Are you all right?" Joseph asked, after a long moment of silence.
"Just cold," I replied crisply. "Let's go in."
The building, covered with pale siding and a new tin roof, showed its age inside. As long as an athletic field, it had a concrete floor and a loft that ran along three sides. The loft area was crammed with furniture, and a sign on the stairway that led to it said, note to customers: YOU CARRY IT UP THE STEPS, YOU CARRY IT DOWN. I guessed it was used for items that were waiting to be picked up by the buyer.
Joseph and I walked along one side of the building, scanning the merchandise. We passed a door with a sign prohibiting entrance and warning that dogs were inside-the ones Trent had spoken of, I assumed.
An auction was going on at either end of the building, two motorized vehicles moving along the floor trailed by crowds of interested buyers. Joseph decided to follow the furniture auctioneer at the far end, while I wandered the rows of tables spread with smaller items-glassware, china, mirrors, statues, and paintings, looking for a portrait my father might have done, the retriever carrying a goose. But I barely saw what was in front of me, for memories were running inside my head like old films, cinema that I was watching with older, more knowing eyes.
Was my mother capable of killing out of revenge and hurt? Could she have done something less deliberate than murder, such as ignore the safety of a child she could no longer endure?
I found the painting that was thought to be my father's and knew immediately it wasn't. I realized that, with regard to my father, the only thing I could be certain about was whether he had done a particular painting. Since he had been the one constant in my life, this new uncertainty made everything I thought I knew seem questionable.
The Deep End of Fear ds-4 Page 9
